REVIEW - Death Ray Magazine (Issue One)

You know how it is with SF magazines.  You wait ages for one to turn up and then two arrive at the same time.  Following my review of the first issue of SciFiNow, here are some thoughts on the June issue of Deathray, not only the first issue of a new mass market SF magazine attempting to compete with SFX but the the first magazine published by new British magazine company Blackfish.

At first glace, there's little to differentiate between Death Ray, SciFiNow and SFX magazines.  They all have that slightly chaotic 00's design philosophy that sees articles carefully picking their way through a maze of boxes and side bars like a drunk walking how through a minefield.  All three magazines have nice glossy pictures, all three have big articles on Spiderman 3, Doctor Who and Heroes and all of them have reviews at the back of the magazine and the odd tongue in cheek article to give them that tiny bit of edge.  However, upon further reading you'll notice a real difference in tone.

SciFiNow's lack of breadth and tendency to try and bullshit its way through articles written only a couple of episodes into new series left the same kind of unpleasant aftertaste that you get after reading an incredibly self-righteous tabloid rant based on assumptions you know to be factually incorrect.  This is because rather than being enthusiastic about SF and trying to impart knowledge and explain why things were cool, the magazine came across as pandering to received opinion in a graceless attempt at ingratiating itself.

Death Ray does not suffer from this problem.  The magazine begins with what it calls a "Ten Minute Guide to the Silver Surfer" and it is written with passion and decent critical insight as rather than just talking about how shiny he is and how he doesn't have any genitals, they talk about the differences between Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's takes on the character and why one character is more morally culpable than an other.  I know nothing about the Silver Surfer but on the basis of this article, he honestly seems like an interesting character to read about.  From this article I know that the people at Death Ray know stuff I don't know and are able and enthusiastic about telling me stuff, which is what intelligent, accessible journalism is all about.

This is not a tone that goes away.

The news section is lively if a touch gimmicky as an interesting run down of US SF pilots segues into movie gossip, evaluated rumours and an incomprehensible "A to E" guide for the month of June.  The gimmicks are clearly so as to stop the news pages from turning into a rather dry Economist-style series of stories but they are actually a bit off-putting and there's probably something to say for the simplicity of the Economist approach, especially as the news items are frequently a couple of paragraphs long and there's an awful lot of them.  Crisply written these work surprisingly well as an exercise in making the magazine feel plugged in even though there's not much here that you won't pick up from Digg or Ain't It Cool.

The quality of the articles is generally quite high and the slightly wider perspective on genre taken by the editor Matt Bielby pays significant dividends. For example the "Deep Thought" section allows the writers to talk about more obscure elements that matter to them such as the art of Jim Steranko and horror writer William Hope Hodgson.  Meanwhile, "The Rim" talks about the Sopranos and "Megacity" goes into insane amounts of detail on the genre history of Chicago.  Simply put, Death Ray's features are light, breezy but also unaffraid to be informative and even intelligent.  When was the last time you ever saw SFX criticise George Orwell's brand of socialism as naive on the same page as it compared Neuromancer to War of the Worlds?

As with the first issue of SciFiNow, there's a LOT of content here.  The "Megacity" article goes on for pages and pages as do the features on 28 Weeks Later and Pirates of the Carribean 3.  This is largely because as this is the first issue, Death Ray will not yet have filled its advertising quota so future episodes will doubltess be less packed with information.  This should also hopefully solve the rather unfortunate design problem posed by articles that don't fit into their allotted space, resulting in the end of the magazine being filled with the tail ends of the different features.  However, Death Ray's more unashamed geekiness makes the articles more packed with information than either SFX or SciFiNow so even if the signal to noise ratio drops as the magazine's advertising grows, Death Ray will remain a substantial read.

Speaking of substantial, Death Ray also has a huge reviews section called "DarkStars".  You'll all be relieved to hear that the magazine, unlike SciFiNow, has proper book reviews!  Indeed, the book coverage is surprisingly good as the magazine not only reviews books but talks about imprints and publishing houses such as Solaris and PS Publishing.  Where SciFiNow felt completely uninterested in written SF, Death Ray feels knowledgeable and enthusiastic, they even have a two page obituary for Vonnegut which strikes me as such a good idea for a magazine like this, I'm amazed that I haven't seen it before.  The quality of the reviews is variable (as you'd expect from the fact that there are a lot of old Future Publishing names here) but by and large the writing is clear and knowledgeable even if nobody shows any interest whatsoever in anything critical so for example, the 28 Weeks Later review doesn't even mention Iraq.  However, despite this populism the reviewers show pretty good taste (which is to say that I agree with them) and they're not unafraid to put the boot into the odd sacred cow such as Doctor Who and they even have moment of quite decent insight such as pointing out that Heroes is terrible at making all the different plot-lines feel part of a single story.

On the whole, aside from some presentational issues, Death Ray has a depth of knowledge and enthusiasm that simply is not present in either SFX or SciFiNow.  There's also a refreshing degree of honesty and openness as the magazine advertises staff vacancies rather than following SFX's line and telling you that you'll never work in the industry EVER (I'd apply but there's no way I'm moving to Bath) and the editor Matt Bielby talks freely about the challenges involved in setting up a brand new publishing company.  As launch editor of SFX, clearly Bielby is practically a veteran editor but despite his and many of his staff's history with SFX, the magazine feels sufficiently different and fresh to provide a real alternative to existing titles.   

I honestly wish everyone at Death Ray the best of luck (even if I'm disappointed that a certain MJ Simpson column was dropped).

Comments

[Niall]

I agree -- I've been very pleasantly surprised so far, though I haven't read most of the issue yet. I think the most telling thing for me is that there's an article that begins:

"To say that the science fiction genre is a broad one is a bit like saying Orbitsville is fairly sizeable."

That's a line that assumes a literate audience. Most other places would have used Ringworld.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

This is true.

I think the difference between Death Ray and the others is really that they don't make the ridiculous assumption (also shared by Interzone apparently) that people who aren't readers are interested enough in SF to want to buy a magazine about it.

It doesn't assume ignorance and therefore this leaves them room to actually impart decent information. The thing on the Silver Surfer was so easy but easy to mess up too and it's just pitched at the perfect level; accessible but erudite and willing to talk about the ideas behind the character.

I'm seriously thinking about a subscription.